Friday, November 27, 2009

O.O.T.S.S.O.E.R.A.A.A.P.: new Science Scout Badges!

Time for more Science Scout badges*! w00t! I am seriously inordinately fond of these things. I get several this time. Why? A combination of coincidence and input. That's right, through the wonder of social media, I suggested several badges and some of them were included. Can you (without reference to my twitter = cheating) guess which ones?

The “I could tell you about my research, but then I’d have to kill you” badge.Also referred to as the "patent" badge.Pretty self-explanatory.

The “I have served on a government advisory panel” badge.Enjoying this experience is not a prerequisite.

Actually, I did enjoy it, but it was a lot of work.

The “I can say ‘Danger: High Voltage!’ (or something to that effect) in more than one language” badge.

See figure below. Somewhere I have a photo of our English-Spanish-German warning sign. I'm known professionally, for drawing skull-and-crossbones on experiments one mustn't touch.

The “that’s right people, I’m an artist, but I do science-y art and it’s cool” badge.

Simply scroll down.

Now the comp. sci. badges come in several different flavours. I'm not sure which one to award myself. I have certainly earned the level 1 The “I have written a computer program that I regularly use” badge. as well as level 2 The “I have written a computer program that others regularly use” badge. I don't program stuff for real-time, so I skip level 3. I did write a program which employed assembly code, but I made G "the liver" C write that part, so I don't quite qualify for level 4 The “I have written a program in assembly language that was used by others” badge.

This one is slightly ambiguous: The “my science equipment is so freaking big, that’s it’s bigger than where I live” badge. Our array is several kilometers in length, but long and thin. I think I qualify, as I certainly live in a much smaller place than it takes to deploy our experiments. Plus NEPTUNE is a 6000 km loop.

I even occasionally qualify for this one:The “I’m a scientist but people tell me I look like a celebrity” badge. though it's a random selection of celebrities who don't really look like each other, and I take this as a sign of either dubious sanity, intention or eyesight on the part of the commenters.